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Game over

In an editorial in this week's Science Magazine, Donald Kennedy writes:

With respect to climate change, we have abruptly passed the tipping point in what until recently has been a tense political controversy. Why? Industry leaders, nongovernmental organizations, Al Gore, and public attention have all played a role. At the core, however, it's about the relentless progress of science. As data accumulate, denialists retreat to the safety of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page or seek social relaxation with old pals from the tobacco lobby from whom they first learned to "teach the controversy." Meanwhile, political judgments are in, and the game is over. Indeed, on this page last week, a member of Parliament described how the European Union and his British colleagues are moving toward setting hard targets for greenhouse gas reductions.

I particularly like the credit he gives to the "relentless progress of science." A while back, I blogged on what I considered to be the tipping point of the political debate (here).

Smacking down a bad idea

I know you've all been eagerly waiting for this (don't worry, I don't have many more rules). I got sidetracked by last week's offset hearing.

Offset projects should deliver climate benefits with high confidence -- that's a key reason trees make lousy offsets, especially non-urban, non-tropical trees. An even more dubious source of offsets is geo-engineering, which is "the intentional large scale manipulation of the global environment" (PDF) to counteract the effects of global warming.

As John Holdren, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted in 2006 (PDF), "The 'geo-engineering' approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects."

Double counting does not legally qualify as fraud

The ENDS Report -- July 2007, issue 390 ($ub. rqd):

ENDS has learned that chemical corporation Rhodia is using carbon credits from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to meet voluntary corporate targets -- only to sell them at a profit to be counted again elsewhere. Cement company Lafarge has not ruled out the same practice.

Companies like Rhodia can use CDM credits to comply with mandatory targets under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. But they can also use them to meet voluntary carbon reduction commitments or to make "carbon neutral" claims, or sell them on the market.

Rhodia and other companies are counting the credits they generate towards their own voluntary emissions reductions and then selling them, thereby enabling other organizations to claim the reductions as well.

This is not a problem of a "few bad apples," or a flaw in the offset market that can be fixed. The fundamental problem with offset trading is that compliance is less transparent than a tax or auctioned permit system or even old-fashioned, non-market regulation. There is more room for deliberate gaming, and more room for honest error. At the same time, a working offset market depends on fewer errors and more precision than other means. An offset that is a formal permit to pollute (like CDM) actually increases emissions if it is implemented less than perfectly. Offsets such as CDM don't make allowances for human imperfection to the same extent other means of controlling carbon emissions do.

[Update] Stephan Singer Head of European Climate and Energy Policy Unit of the World Wildlife Fund claims that if LaFarge in fact does sell their voluntary credits on the CDM market they will be violating their agreement with WWF.

The TV show 24 will reduce its carbon footprint

Fans of 24 know that if there's one person that can stop climate change, it ain't Al Gore. It's Jack Bauer.

If you are not familiar with Jack, here are some of his qualifications from the site Random Jack Bauer Facts:

1. There are two hands that can beat a royal flush. Jack Bauer's right hand and Jack Bauer's left hand.
2. Most people would need months to recover from 20 months of Chinese interrogation. Jack Bauer needs a shower, a shave and a change of clothes.
3. The city of Los Angeles once named a street after Jack Bauer in gratitude for his saving the city several times. They had to rename it after people kept dying when they tried to cross the street. No one crosses Jack Bauer and lives.
4. If Jack Bauer had been a Spartan the movie would have been called "1".
5. Some people see the glass as half full. Others see it as half empty. Jack Bauer see the glass as a deadly weapon.

Yup, Jack is one tough son-of-a-gun, and he and the producers of 24 have pledged to fight climate change and take the following steps to reduce their carbon footprint:

Information is power

The day is sweltering, air conditioners are cranked up, and the power grid is straining to meet demand. Today is a "needle peak" day -- on the annual power demand chart, it shows up as a spike. Out of the year's 8,760 hours, needle peaks will occupy 200 hours or less. An extreme day like this is why the grid maintains roughly twice as much power generating and transmission capacity as it uses on an average day. Even though power plants and lines are idle most of the year, this costly overbuilding is needed to cover all contingencies. The grid is built to be there "just in case."

But what if another power resource were available that could dramatically reduce that peak demand, one that involved generating and transmitting no power at all? No, this isn't some weird "zero energy" thing. The paradoxical sounding resource I'm talking about is already in use. It's the demand, also known as the load, itself. The basic idea is that the grid can meet overall needs not only by supplying power, but by adjusting power use. The word for this is demand response, and it's a fundamental aspect of the smart grid.

Enemies of the human race

Last week, I put up a post explaining that BP will be increasing their dumping of toxic waste into the Great Lakes.

Congress overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning BP's dumping -- a resolution sponsored by Rahm Emanuel, a powerful Democratic Congressman.

Now, thanks to some fine investigative reporting by the Chicago Tribune, we find out that BP has been dumping mercury as well, and will continue to do so:

Federal records analyzed by the Tribune show BP puts 2 pounds of mercury into the lake every year from its sprawling plant 3 miles southeast of Chicago in Whiting, Ind. That amount is small compared with the mercury that falls into the water from air pollution, but mercury builds up in the environment and is so toxic that even tiny drops can threaten fish and people.

A little-noticed exemption in BP's controversial new state water permit gives the oil company until 2012 to meet strict federal limits on mercury discharges.

A quick review of Project Phin

By my lights, the world's best movie critic is Janet Maslin, hands down. She has a simple formula: she lets you know if the movie sucks or not, she doesn't give away the ending, and she is funny.

Take her review of The Bridges of Madison County. The second 'graph begins like this: "Arguably the world's longest greeting card ... " Beautiful. Someday I hope to be able to slide a metaphoric shiv with such economy.

Anyway, the NYT has Maslin off movies and on the book-review beat, so we are on our own when it comes to reviewing the Center for American Progress Action Fund's venture into celluloid.

Raves: Some of the clips are very funny. And on clip #4, Sarah Silverman takes the cringe factor to 11. If cringing were a renewable resource, that clip alone would solve our energy problems.

Pans: I'm a little underwhelmed by the call to action for "flex fuels." I get it -- it's a better tagline than say, CAFE standards. But still. Flex fuels ... really? The revolution will not be on TV, and it will not be on flex fuels.

If you had access to that kind of talent, what would you do?

From Bend It to Blow It

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Their eco-song doesn’t suck. Too much

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Boxer Sticks It to Johnson

Senate hearing probes EPA chief’s delay on tailpipe decision Can U.S. states enact stricter tailpipe regulations than the feds? That question has been hovering in the air since California requested a waiver from the U.S. EPA in late 2005. Why no answer yet? At a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing yesterday, EPA head […]